April 22nd is Earth Day
Spring is in bloom in Brooklyn and there is no better way to celebrate it than with Earth Day! A holiday started in 1970 to raise awareness around environmental protection, Earth Day is now celebrated annually world-wide on April 22nd. There are many ways to celebrate and honor the Earth we call home. Below are five book recommendations to help get in touch with nature and brush up on your knowledge of climate change this spring. Braiding sweetgrass for young adults : indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. …
Happy Earth Day!
Yanari Rodriguez
Teen artist Yanari Rodriguez created this poster to promote Earth Day, and gives some background here. Thank you, Yanari! Happy Earth Day to all! My inspiration for creating this poster is my love for nature. Going outside every morning and taking a breath of fresh air gives me a purpose and makes me feel alive. I feel it is necessary to take care of our beautiful planet, because without it, where would we all be?
Branch Spotlight: Greenpoint Library and Environmental Education Center
Acacia, Environmental Justice Coordinator - ONS
Your Library, Your Planet Each year we take a moment to celebrate our environment on Earth Day. Our little ones come home from school with plants and ideas for recycling and we think about how our behaviors impact our planet. But now, Brooklyn Public Library has a new branch where every day is Earth Day: The Greenpoint Library and Environmental Education Center (GEEC). But why is this new branch in Greenpoint? Greenpoint sits at the confluence of the East River and the Newtown Creek, at the Northwest edge of Brooklyn. In the nineteenth century, Greenpoint became the…
Earth Day Poetry Recommendations from a Former Hater
My reading appetite is insatiable, an annual sixty-course feast of literary fiction, mysteries and romantic comedies, the occasional nonfiction book tacked on like the green juice you choke down after a gluttonous vacation. I am willing to read anything, but until two years ago, I would have described myself as poetry averse. Why look to corny, rhyming couplets for the meaning of life when I could instead reflect on the emo lyrics of my teen angst? But then something happened: I got hooked on a weekly column about poetry and lipstick and caregiving written by a British cookbook author named…
Hidden Ephemera in the Clippings Files
Beyond the stanchions, in the center of the Brooklyn Collection, sit two rows of cabinets. Clocking in at 110 drawers, they contain a collection of newspaper clippings that are finally getting some much-needed attention. The clippings files include folders with obscure labels such as "Local Color" and "Brooklyn Spirit", and the subjects they cover—the aforementioned included—are cataloged in a 447-page Word document. It is also one of our best-kept secrets. Though we use the clippings files to answer many reference questions, they are so sprawling and voluminous that even a…